1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to medical equipment and in particular to drivers for use in installing an anchor device into a bone for maintaining a ligament section thereto.
2. Prior Art
Driver devices for use in both positioning and fixing an anchor or fastener onto a bone surface location whereat a ligament section, or the like, is to be attached are well known. An earlier invention of one of the present inventors in a Suture Anchor Assembly, U.S. Pat. No. 4,632,100, shows a driver for mounting an anchor on a forward end thereof, with a suture connected to the anchor rear end that is shown contained in a driver center cavity. The driver of the U.S. Pat. No. 4,632,100, like those of the present invention, provides for guiding an anchor mounted onto a driver forward end to a bone location and for turning that mounted anchor into a bone cortex. Whereafter, the driver is pulled off of the anchor, exposing a suture that is connected to the anchor end and is maintained within the driver body. Distinct therefrom, the ligament anchor driver of the invention provides an arrangement for maintaining the suture contained within the driver body as a pair of straight suture strands that are bent upon themselves, facilitating the driver being pulled away. Such driver separation is made without the suture strands twisting or knotting together as could hamper driver removal from the seated anchor.
A use of the anchor and driver of the above cited U.S. Pat. No. 4,632,100 is shown in another patent to one of the inventors, U.S. Pat. No. 5,037,426. Also, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,738,255 and 5,013,316, to one of the present inventors, illustrate other driver and anchor combinations. Additionally, a number of combinations of anchors and drivers with arrangements for capturing, maintaining and fitting sutures to extend from seated anchors are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,779,616; 4,946,468; 5,071,420; 5,100,417; 5,102,421; 5,139,520; 5,207,679; 5,211,650; 5,224,946; 5,236,445; and 5,258,016. None of which patents, however, involves an anchor driver with an arrangement for maintaining a suture within the driver body that is like that of the invention.